


Important Ideas

by FirstWriter



Series: Other Eyes [2]
Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate points of view, Canon Compliant, F/M, Semi-Public Sex, Winter's Heart, Y'know because of the Bond?, worldbuilding nerd at work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FirstWriter/pseuds/FirstWriter
Summary: That whole thing in Caemlyn in Book 9, but different points of view, and what was happening off the page?
Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Aviendha, Rand al'Thor/Elayne Trakand, Rand al'Thor/Min Farshaw
Series: Other Eyes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708453
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

Leaving Rand with Mistress Harfor, Min hurried down the corridor of the Royal Palace as fast as the heels on her boots would let her. She didn’t think Rand could bring himself to leave her in Caemlyn, but it would be better not to take chances. They _had_ to settle this, for his sake and for theirs. She accosted the first person she saw in red and white livery, an older man, with thinning gray hair.

“Could you tell me where I can find the queen?” she asked. 

He eyed her somewhat suspiciously, with a doubtful second glance at her breeches and coat, but they were well-made and finely cut, so she passed as a person of some substance. “There is no queen as yet, my lady. The Lady Elayne has proclaimed her right to the throne, but she has not been crowned. If my lady has business with Lady Elayne, I can arrange for her to be informed, and a place for my lady to await her pleasure.”

Ignoring the audible question in his use of “my lady” Min tried another route. If she waited around on messages, Light knew who would find out she was here, and maybe Rand, too. Just because she wasn’t having any of his foolishness in avoiding Elayne did not mean it was a good idea to let the world know what they were about. “Nynaeve Sedai sent me to find Lady Elayne over some Aes Sedai business. I don’t know what it’s about, but if you don’t want to take me to her, _you_ call tell Nynaeve Sedai she’s not important enough for Elayne’s attention!”

The fellow’s demeanor didn’t change, aside from a brief sigh, and the bow of his head and his gesture inviting Min to follow him was perfectly gracious, but also making it clear w he didn’t approve of anything about it. They arrived at a carved door, where two women wearing coats and breeches fancier than her own, a uniform in fact, stood outside. When the serving man told them Min was a messenger from Nynaeve, the lanky one ducked her head into the room briefly, then nodded to Min when she stepped back out, holding the door open, as a spindly old man Min vaguely remembered as the First Clerk or something of the sort bowed his way out.

Min passed through the doorway while the Guardswoman murmured something to the servant who had guided her there. Elayne was in the room, rising from a table, an anxious smile on her face. Min thought she herself must be wearing a similar expression, but stuffed her own anxieties down. She loved Elayne like a sister, but the Daughter-Heir was beautiful, with golden hair and bright eyes that were set off by a dark blue silk dress. She didn’t think of the other woman as competition, not truly, but she was sure Rand loved her as much as he did Min herself, and it was hard sometimes not to feel like she did not measure up. Elayne was going to be an Aes Sedai, might be already, if “Nynaeve Sedai” was any indication, and the queen of a great nation. And she was even younger than Rand! It really didn’t seem fair sometimes. 

Her unwilling thoughts flew out of her head as the taller woman embraced her, “Min! I’ve missed you so much! How did you come to Caemlyn?” She returned Elayne’s hug sympathetically, hearing the unspoken question. Rand might love Elayne, but Elayne was just as stuck in this mess as Min, and she hadn’t seen him in months. She couldn’t make herself feel guilty for all that had passed between her and Rand in their time together, but what Elayne had had of him was scant and she did deserve more. 

Pulling back from Elayne’s hug, she looked up at her friend. “I came with Rand, of course. He should be with Nynaeve right now, but he’s set on avoiding you. He heard about the banners,” Elayne’s face paled and her eyes widened in worry, and Min hastened to reassure her. “He understands why you did it, but he’s still sulking about it and he’s using that as an excuse not to see you.”

“Why doesn’t he want to see me?” she asked.

Min’s heart went out to Elayne at the look on her face. “He got some fool notion that we’d be better off with him staying away from us. He thinks that if someone doesn’t try to kill us to hurt him, he’ll do it himself,” Min told her, letting not a little of her exasperation seep out.

“I suppose he does care then,” Elayne sighed, sitting back down, after gracefully smoothing her skirts under herself.

Min cocked a hip and leaned against the table, reaching down to put a hand on the Daughter-Heir’s shoulder. “He does love you, Elayne, I got him to admit that much. It’s why he’s acting such a fool.” 

Elayne smiled faintly and patted her hand. “Thank you, Min. I appreciate it more than I can say, but hearing it from other women just doesn’t feel real.” She sighed again, and Min searched for something else to say.

“So, Nynaeve is an Aes Sedai now? Is that true? What about you? How did that happen? You haven’t been back to Tar Valon, have you?”

Elayne laughed. “No, Egwene raised us to the shawl after the Hall in Salidar chose her as Amyrlin…” At Min’s exclamation of surprise, she went into the whole story of what the rebel sisters had been doing since Min left Salidar. Elayne also filled her in on some of what had taken place since her arrival in Caemlyn, including spies in the palace, an assassination attempt the day before and the guards she had outside her door as a result.

“So Mat isn’t here? Rand wanted to see him, too.”

“He and Thom and the others were delayed leaving Ebou Dar, and I do not care very much whom Rand al’Thor does or does not want to see,” stated Elayne with some asperity. “I asked Caseille to send for…ah, here she is…” she rose again, as the door opened.

Min had never laid eyes on the woman who entered the room, but she knew at once this must be Aviendha. Elayne had mentioned her in Salidar, not knowing she was the third, and had said she was a Maiden of the Spear. That was how Min had always pictured her, with short hair and a warrior’s tail, in men’s clothes and a somewhat mannish demeanor. Not that all the Maidens looked mannish or ugly, but it was reassuring to imagine. Aviendha…wasn’t like that at all.

Taller than even Elayne, her skin was darkened from the sun, just enough to give her a healthy glow, not nearly as dry or wrinkled as some Aiel women got. Instead of a Maiden’s garb and short hair, she dressed the same as a Wise One or other Aiel women, in an _algode_ blouse and bulky dark skirts, with a matching shawl, none of which could quite conceal her figure, as slim and womanly as a man could dream and with something of a Maiden’s deadly grace as she stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind her. Her hair was a darker shade than Elayne’s red-gold, and held away from her face with a scarf. Unlike most Aiel women, she wore only an elaborate silver necklace, but the lack of jewelry certainly didn’t make her plain. _Light, it isn’t fair! Can’t any_ ugly _women fall for the man!_ The Aiel woman gave Elayne a brief smiling glance and turned a hard one on Min herself, as her hand rose to caress her belt knife. 

Elayne smiled warmly in response to her entry. “Aviendha, this is Min Farshaw, I’ve told you about her. Min, this is my sister, Aviendha, of the Nine Valleys Sept of the Tardaad Aiel. She’s an apprentice to the Wise Ones…” Elayne faltered as Aviendha continued to stare at Min. Well, maybe Min was staring a little herself, she didn’t think anyone could fault her for it. She deliberately slouched further, and was now leaning against the table while facing the newcomer, with one boot crossed over the other at the ankle.

“I thought she might be,” Min drawled, folding her arms. “I’ve heard the name, of course, from the Maidens and such.” Well, she had heard it first from Rand, but she wasn’t going to give the other woman _that_ satisfaction. Eying the belt knife on which Aviendha was resting her hand, Min produced a couple of knives from under her coat, rolling them between her fingers.

Aviendha’s own knife came smoothly out into her own fingers, in a grip that Min recognized, from Thom’s teaching, could be easily shifted for throwing or thrusting. “Impressive, for a wetlander,” she said. “Do you often need so many?”

Min’s jaw tightened, but Elayne spoke up, “Oh, must you both? We have more important matters to deal with. Aviendha, Rand is here, in the palace.”

The Aiel woman, putting her knife away, missed the sheath on her first try, then stabbed it abruptly into place as she stared at Elayne with wide eyes. “He is here?” She glanced to the side momentarily as if expecting to have overlooked him in the same room. 

“With Nynaeve, right now,” Min added. “I don’t know how long they’re going to be, but he needed to give her something and ask her about some channeling business or other. He’s trying to avoid…both of you,” she admitted reluctantly to Aviendha. “He’s using a disguise with the One Power, it’s a truly hideous face with a wart on his nose, just in case you spot him sneaking about.”

“For what reason would he avoid us?” Aviendha demanded. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him you loved him,” Min snapped back. “Why does he think you don’t?”

“I have done nothing,” she flared indignantly. “He is the one who left rooms whenever I entered, who would Travel about without telling me. And he loves my first-sister. He would not avoid her unless some other gave him cause.” A hint of emphasis on the word ‘other’ made it plain whom she suspected of giving Rand that cause.

“Min, please, that’s not fair to say to Aviendha,” sighed Elayne. “Aviendha, I’m sure it’s not Min’s fault. If anything, it was probably my own with the banners. This is confusing enough for all three of us. We all want the same thing, and I want you both to be happy as much as you want it for me. If not for his sake, can you at least _talk_ about this? For mine?”

“I’m sorry, Elayne,” Min said to her friend, as Aviendha murmured, “Forgive me, sister,” clearly asking Elayne’s forgiveness and not Min’s.

“Aviendha, I want to tell Min what we discussed concerning Rand,” the Daughter-Heir continued. “If he is going to be leaving again, well…it might be the best we can do right now.”

Aviendha gave a grudging nod and Elayne turned to Min, saying, “I would like to try bonding Rand as a warder. I don’t know if you know anything of the bond, but it gives benefits to the warder, allowing him to go longer without rest, survive serious wounds and so on. It also lets the woman holding the bond know what he’s feeling, if he’s hurt or well and she can also find him wherever he is.” 

“That’s a wonderful idea, Elayne,” Min said enthusiastically. She would not be reluctant where Aviendha had already agreed, she could be just as amenable as Elayne could wish. And really, if it did help Rand, so much the better. She added sincerely, “I can’t think of any Aes Sedai I’d rather trust with him than you.”

Aviendha gave a twitch as if surprised, and Elayne hastened to add, “No, I don’t just mean me. I think there is a way Aviendha and I can include you in the weave so that he would be bonded to you as well. To all three of us, Min.”

“Me?” Min was astonished. “Elayne, it… that sounds … are you sure you can do that?”

“Quite certain,” Elayne said with a warm smile. “At least, the theory seems sound.” Her expression grew graver. “But if we go through with this, you should understand the costs. For one thing, when a warder dies, the pain to the woman bonded to him is very great. So much so that many sisters never bond another warder again. It fills you with grief, and takes a very long time to get over. Short of stilling, there is nothing Aes Sedai fear so much. It is an important reason why the Three Oaths make an exception for defending your warder.”

“I think I understand,” Min said, her tone coming out subdued. “I saw a sister in Cairhien whose warders had died, and she was utterly vicious toward…toward the man who killed them. I’ve never seen an Aes Sedai so determined to hurt someone.” And now that she thought of it, it might explain some of the odd ways Alanna Mosvani had behaved. Min thought she remembered seeing her in the Tower trailed by two men, but only one had come with her to Dumai’s Wells. But it made perfect sense with what she had seen of Erian Boroleos. Shaking her head in dismissal of both Green sisters, she addressed Elayne. “I can’t imagine this bond being any worse than losing him in the first place.”

Elayne swallowed and nodded along with a tight-eyed Aviendha. “What about for him?” Min asked.

“For a warder,” Elayne began, hesitantly. “For a warder, losing his Aes Sedai can be worse. He feels much the same things through the bond, he’ll know where we are and how we feel and the rest, but most warders die when the sister does.” 

Min’s eyes widened. “So when Moiraine…did Lan? Wait, you said Nynaeve married him!” 

Elayne shook her head. “Lan seems to be surviving so far, but as I understand it, his situation is particularly favorable. The important thing is to find the warder a purpose so important he has to stay alive to carry it out instead of following her into the grave. I think, being the Dragon Reborn, Rand would have that if something were to happen to one of us. And the bond with the other two should survive, so that might even shield him against the worst effects.” She blushed as she added, “Most sisters believe it’s best to find him a lover to keep his spirits up, and well…” 

“We have that taken care of,” Min took up with a grin, when Elayne trailed off. Really, it was amusing how the other woman could be so awkward about things like that. She looked at Aviendha, who drew herself up and arched an eyebrow.

“Have you?” asked the Aiel woman as her hand drifted in the vicinity of her belt knife, before she jerked it to her side. “I myself lay with him quite some time ago, before you came to him, I think.”

Min gave her a pleasant smile in return. “Really? I suppose it’s just as well for me you chased him off. He really does seem to enjoy our times in bed together. He certainly showed no sign of wanting to avoid _that_.” 

Aviendha’s eyes narrowed, but before she could say something unpleasant, they heard a soft sigh. Min and Aviendha both glanced at Elayne, noting their friend’s somewhat strained expression as she avoided their looks. Min met Aviendha’s eyes, the other woman seeming to understand her unspoken question, and she gave Min a small shake of her head. “Since he’s here, Elayne, you can…if you want…” she cleared her throat and tried again. “If we can convince him to do this bond, you should have no problem at all getting him to your bed.” 

“Yes, sister,” agreed Aviendha, hastily. “Once we have met our obligations with Rand al’Thor, we can give you privacy.”

“I have some heartleaf tea you can drink, just in case you weren’t prepared yet,” Min offered.

“Thank you, both,” Elayne smiled at them, and reached out to take one of their hands in each of hers. “If you truly mean that, I _do_ want some time with him!” Something seemingly occurred to her and she added, “Just in case you find it awkward with the bond, and Rand and I…” She blushed again before continuing, “There is a trick sisters use for privacy from…when they have a warder.” She went on to describe how to imagine wrapping the sensation of a bond in an imaginary kerchief to keep from feeling it or to keep her own feelings private. Min listened dubiously, still not certain it would matter for her.

  
“It is all very well to bond him, and for Elayne to lie with him,” said Aviendha, “but what are we to do about him now? You can say that he loves us, and perhaps we can come to accept each other as sister-wives,” she directed a _very_ considering look at Min, who returned it straightforwardly. The Aiel woman’s lips tightened for some reason before she continued, “But we must set straight what lies between us and him.”

“That’s true,” Min said reluctantly. “I can’t tell if he means what he says about staying away from us or if he wants to be with us, but can’t bring himself to do it. He admitted he loves us when I pressed him, but I don’t know if he even knows what he means by it. I told him that we love him too, but he refuses to accept that either.” Sighing, she leaned back against the table again. “And however he loves us, he certainly hasn’t accepted the whole business of loving more than one woman. Light, he was unconscious at Falme, when Elayne and I were in the same place as him. Has he ever even been in both your company at once?”

“I doubt it,” Elayne frowned. “I don’t believe you two even knew each other at all before we all left the Stone,” she said to Aviendha, who shook her head.

“The first time I spoke with him was on the way to Rhuidean. After that, I knew some of what would come to pass between us, but I did not understand it, and I blamed him for it.” Aviendha sighed and shifted her shawl on her arms before continuing as if confessing a fault.

“I spoke on your behalf, Elayne, but not in the proper spirit of a near-sister. I did so to drive him away from me. Then when I took him as a lover, I incurred _toh_ because of what I had said before, so I could not lie with him again. It strained some parts of what was between us, even though others became easier. It was very confusing and I did not know how to act toward him.”

Elayne touched her shoulder sympathetically. “I could have handled things better between us as well. I was so jealous of Berelain, and so concerned that we were running out of time together, that I pushed closer to him as fast as I could, and then I blamed him for not returning my feelings just as I wanted. I gave him a letter before we parted telling him how I felt, but he seemed so glad I was leaving him that I wrote him another one. That one…well, it did not reflect how I felt about him, except at that one moment.”

Min remembered Rand babbling something about Elayne and letters when she had given him the letter she brought from Salidar on her friend’s behalf. “He said you wrote him two other letters, and something about wishing that one was true and the other a joke…”

Elayne was clearly upset. “I didn’t mean for him to take the other to heart! It was only after I wrote it, that I saw any evidence he even cared about me at all.”

Aviendha looked at her in dismay. “Elayne, I told him you meant every word in both your letters!”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, what was in the letter you gave me for him in Salidar?” asked Min.

The Daughter-Heir buried her face in her hands as she quoted, “‘I have made my feelings clear. Know that they have not changed.’”

Min could not help it. A laugh burst out of her. Well, it wasn’t truly funny, it would not have been funny if she was not sure that Rand loved Elayne anyway and the letters had not actually frightened him off, but caught in this absurd tangle, they all seemed to be acting like complete loobies over the man. Aviendha seemed to think so as well, her eyes shone and she wore a wide grin. 

After a moment, Elayne looked up with a rueful smile of her own, and voiced much the same thought. “We really are behaving like some fool woman in a love story, aren’t we?”

“I do not think anyone would dare write a story like ours, sister,” said Aviendha. “Who would believe it?”

“What about you, Min?” asked Elayne. “Is there some reason Rand doesn’t listen to you, about us?”

Min wanted to deny any such thing, but really, it was not all that embarrassing admitting this to Elayne. Aviendha…was part of the package. She had this sister business with Elayne and she had as much of a claim on Rand as they did. If she wanted Rand and Elayne, Aviendha was part of that. _And so am I!_ Min thought to herself. _The sooner she realizes that the smoother this will go._

She told Elayne how she had used his denial of seeing her as a woman to tease him and make him think she had no interest in him as a man, right up until they fell into each other’s arms and he shut himself away in his self-recriminations. She sighed. “Aviendha is right. We’ve all tangled this up too much. We have to sort it all out, and do it with him.”

“Should we apologize, or ask him to help us meet our _toh_?” asked Aviendha, curiously.

“Are you mad?” demanded Min. “You don’t apologize to a man unless you truly need to. We haven’t even done anything wrong!”

“Yes,” declared Elayne firmly. “This _is_ his fault! We would not have acted so if it was not for him snaring us like this in the first place. We will tell him the truth about how we feel, and we will tell him, firmly, mind you, what we expect from him, but first we are _going_ to make him tell us the truth and discuss how _he_ feels, we are not going to beg or plead. Are we agreed?”

“If you think that is the best path, Elayne,” said Aviendha, hesitantly.

“We may as well,” Min interjected. “In my experience, that’s the only way to get anywhere with him.” If she put just a touch of emphasis on her own experience, well, Aviendha did not need to make it so plain that she was going along with Elayne, not with them both.

Discussing some last details, the three women left together to find Rand.


	2. Wisdom

“…can see it would be much more convenient than you having to sneak back into Caemlyn to find me.” Nynaeve wrapped her shawl more snugly about her shoulders, and cocked an eyebrow at Rand as if daring him to possibly disagree with her reasoning.

“But still more dangerous than if you waited here,” Rand objected, looking to Lan, hoping for more agreement from the other man, but whatever his concern for his wife’s safety, the warder did not seem inclined to argue with her in front of Rand. He wondered if he should mention where they would be going next. Surely Nynaeve wouldn’t want to wait in Far Madding until he sprung his trap….

The words he thought to say flew out of his head and Nynaeve sprang from her chair as the door to her rooms opened abruptly. Rand found himself on his own feet, grappling for _saidin_ in a panic at the women who entered. It was as bad as he feared, and his stomach lurched nearly as much for that as from what he had come to expect from the Power. As he held himself up on the table and fought down the dizziness, he felt the tingle of a woman touching the True Source.

He glanced up and pulled back from Nynaeve’s outstretched hands. “It’s nothing you can Heal, Nynaeve,” he told her. “In any case, it seems you win the argument.” Taking Nynaeve and Lan would be a small price to get clear of the Royal Palace now.

He slid a glance up at the women who had entered the room and could not look away. Elayne and Aviendha stood with Min. Their expressions, all three, were resolutely fixed on him. Elayne, in a dark blue Andoran dress, with her hands gripping the skirts, was the image of queenly determination, and Aviendha, her reddish hair longer than he had yet seen it, brushing her dark shawl and _algode_ blouse, met his stare with one fierce & proud of her own. It had been months since he had sent her away, longer since he had seen Elayne off from Tear, and he could not tear his eyes from them. Aviendha did not change expression as she met his gaze, but Elayne seemed to be pleased, or perhaps satisfied, to have caught him before he could leave.

He pulled his gaze away from the women and straightened up, not letting them see the effort it cost as he made his voice casual. “It is past time to be gone, Min.”

Whatever satisfaction he had glimpsed in Elayne vanished as her blue eyes widened. “You think you can just go without even _speaking_ to me, to us?” she breathed as her mouth hung open, a queen shocked by a shepherd’s temerity.

“Men!” The exclamation of feminine contempt came from Min and Aviendha as one, their arms folded in agreement with Elayne. Exchanging a glance, they both affected a more casual posture, each unfolding her arms from over her breasts. 

“The men who tried to kill me in Cairhien would turn this palace into a slag heap if they knew I was here. Maybe if they just suspected,” he interjected before they could go on. “I suppose Min told you it was Asha’man. Don’t trust any of them.” He might as well warn them while he was here. Light, what had he been thinking, building the Black Tower in Andor? Another thing for Elayne to take him to task over. “Except for three, maybe. Damer Flinn, Jahar Narishma and Eben Hopwill. You may be able to trust them. For the rest…” Elayne’s look turned more thoughtful at his admission and Rand hastened to explain himself. “Sometimes a sword turns in your hand, but I still need a sword. Just stay away from any man in a black coat.” Not thoughtful, she seemed saddened. Perhaps she was willing now to let him go. “Look, there’s no time for talking. It’s best I go quickly.”

“He is right in one thing,” Lan spoke up, his pipe in his teeth. “Anyone near him is in great danger. Anyone.” At least the warder understood, however unwilling his wife was to listen. Nynaeve snorted as if reading Rand’s mind and stroked the scrip containing the access keys, though her smile faded. Maybe she _could_ see the danger.

But if Nynaeve might be coming to her senses, no one else was. “Do my first-sister and I fear danger?” Aviendha scoffed, as she planted her fists on her hips, dropping her shawl as if scorning even that bit of protection. “This man has _toh_ to us, _Aan’allein_ , and we to him.” she declared, using the name the Aiel gave the last king of Malkier. “It must be worked out.” Rand had no idea what _toh_ he could have incurred, or how, when he had not seen them in so long, but she would never back down if she saw a debt of honor between them. 

“I don’t know what anybody’s toes have to do with anything, or feet, either, but I’m not going anywhere until you talk to them, Rand!” Min stated with her hands outspread, not noticing the sharp look Aviendha gave her at the pun.

Rand sighed. There would be no getting around all three of them on this. Min had been willfully blind to the danger surrounding him from the first and neither Aviendha nor Elayne were ever inclined to caution in any regard. He leaned back against the table, scratching the back of his head as Lews Therin mocked him. _Trapped! You’ll never get away! They’re as mad as you._ He ignored the voice. Maybe this had nothing to do with his feelings for them, or what Min claimed they all felt for him. Surely they wouldn’t want to bring _that_ up in front of Nynaeve and Lan. Elayne must be angry at what Nynaeve mentioned before. _Aviendha called her “first-sister” and she was indignant enough on her behalf when it was just near-sister._ Perhaps if he apologized for the prisoners and the rest, they’d let him go.

He met Elayne’s eyes casually, not letting her see what he was up to. Show a woman regret, and she’d jump on it, whether or not it was what she was angry over. “I’m sorry you ended up with the _sul’dam_ and _damane_. Taim was supposed to deliver them to the sisters I thought were with you. But I suppose anyone can make a mistake like that. Maybe he thought all those Wisdoms and Wise Women Nynaeve has gathered were Aes Sedai.” He offered a smile: a small error, nothing to raise a fuss about.

“Rand,” said Min, as if warning him, for some reason. At his questioning look, a light came into her eye. Whatever she meant, best not to let her start in. “Anyway, you seem to have enough of them to hold onto a handful of women until you can turn them over to the…the other sisters, the ones with Egwene,” he smoothly passed over the slip he almost made. If Nynaeve was any guide, suggesting the two of them were not real sisters would only put Elayne’s back up.

“Thing never turn out quite the way you expect, do they?” He changed the topic before she decided to pick over his hesitation. “Who would have thought a few sisters running away from Elaida would grow into a rebellion against the White Tower? With Egwene as Amyrlin! And the Band of the Red Hand for her army.”

Maybe if he tossed them a bone. If this rebellion was so important to Elayne… “I suppose Mat can stay there awhile.” He blinked away the colors in his head. Did he see Mat that time? The strongest color actually seemed to be…pink? No, that wasn’t important. He had to keep her attention away from him.

“Well. A strange turn of events all around.” If Elayne thought he was concerned about White Tower affairs that might suffice to let him depart without this encounter turning any worse. “At this rate, I won’t be surprised if my friends in the Tower work up enough courage to come out in the open.”

For some reason, though, no matter what he said, Elayne’s chin had been rising, and spots of color appeared in her cheeks as the glare in her eyes intensified. Everything pointed to her temper building up, but rather than respond, she turned to arch an eyebrow at Nynaeve, who met the cool look with an innocent one of her own. Was something going on there? Did Nynaeve have her own reason for wanting out of the palace besides helping him? Elayne turned back to Rand, her lips tight for the moment before they parted.

“It won’t do, Rand,” she proclaimed, a queen passing a sentence. Her hands were buried in the folds of her skirts, but he would have wagered they were fists. Her voice was as cold as the wind outside. “None of that matters a hair, not now.” He had not put her off, only reminded her of every other reason she had to be angry at him, without diverting her at all. “You and Aviendha and Min and I are what we need to talk about. And we will. We _all_ will, Rand al’Thor, and you are _not_ leaving the Palace until we do.” Neither of the other two said anything, but their stance made it plain she spoke for all three.

Rand just looked at her. All he wanted to do was spare her pain. Instead, he had fallen in love with two other women, he had left her mother to die in the hands of one of the Forsaken. He came to Andor with the best of intentions, but from what Nynaeve had said, it seemed as if his efforts to hold the country together had done nothing of the sort. And even trying to avoid admitting what he was seemed useless, if she was going to insist on talking about all four of them. Best to just make a clean break. Say it out loud so Min would finally see the reality, let Aviendha know she was right get away from him, that the other two were better off sharing her disgust. He had made Aviendha’s life miserable as the Wise Ones forced her into his company, and took advantage of her when she tried to get away. He took advantage of Min as well and her compassion for him! He had no business trying to avoid this. He deserved whatever they had to say to him, deserved what Elayne, what Aviendha and even Min would truly think of him, once they knew him for what he was.

Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and tore open the wound. “I love you, Elayne.” He met Aviendha’s eyes. “I love you, Aviendha.” He put all the sincerity he had into the words. “I love you, Min.” All the love he felt for each of them. It would be his only chance to tell them how he felt, and he owed them the truth. Better they believed the hard truth. “And not one a whisker more or less than the other two. I don’t want just one of you, I want all three.” He could put it no more plainly than that. The words kept rushing out of him, and he didn’t try to hold them in. “So there you have it. I’m a lecher. Now you can walk away and not look back. It’s madness, anyway. I can’t afford to love anybody.” It was as much of an apology as he could bear to give voice. He would not, could not ask their forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it, and no woman as proud as they could give it.

“Rand al’Thor!” erupted Nynaeve. “That is the most outrageous thing I ever heard out of your mouth! The very idea of telling _three_ women you love them! You’re _worse_ than a lecher! You apologize right now!” Lan looked as shocked as Rand had ever seen him, with his mouth open and his pipe in his hand. Their opinions were small turnips though, next to what had to be coming from the women he had spoken to.

Elayne spoke first. “I love you, Rand, and though you haven’t asked, I want to marry you.” There was no condemnation, no judgment in her tone or on her face, just a slight blush, as if _her_ words had been the unseemly ones! 

“My heart is yours, Rand,” said Aviendha. She never used his first name alone, it was too familiar for nearly any Aiel, much less one he had thought hated him until this moment. “If you make a bridal wreath for my first-sister and me, I will pick it up.” She had once scoffed at him on the subject of bridal wreaths, saying he had no need to know what they meant, and now she claimed she would accept whatever he offered?

“If you don’t know by this time that I love you, then you’re blind, deaf and dead!” retorted Min with her typical mischief back in her eye. “As for marriage, we’ll work that out between the three of us, so there!” He had been sure if Min heard him tell Elayne and Aviendha to their faces, she would be hurt, that she could not keep up her pretense of acceptance, but she hadn’t changed a hair! _Who did she mean by “the three of us”?_

“You’re all mad,” Rand said, staring at first one, then another. “I’d marry any of you – all of you, the Light help me! – but it can’t be and you know it.” From the smiles that blossomed on all three of their faces, they knew no such thing. He couldn’t make himself care. _Burn you, too weak to do the right thing, just because three women smile at you._ He had dreamed of those smiles, but he never thought he’d see Elayne’s or Aviendha’s again, much less all three together.

Elayne spoke up. “There is something else we need to discuss. In my rooms, I think.” Her smile lessened maybe a hair as she added too innocently “There’s no need to bother Nynaeve and Lan.” She tried to hide a wary glance at the older woman, but Nynaeve still seemed to be reeling over what she just heard, pulling her braid as she stared into space.

“Yes,” Rand agreed, with some hesitation. He couldn’t imagine what the three of them intended, if they didn’t want Nynaeve to know about it, even after what had just been said in front of her. “I said you’d won, Nynaeve. I won’t leave without seeing you again,” he added to placate her before she started questioning Elayne.

“Oh, yes!” blurted Nynaeve. “Of course not. I watched him grow up, almost from the start. Watched his first steps. He can’t go without a good long talk with me!” He hoped _she_ didn’t give herself away. The last thing he needed was Elayne and Aviendha deciding to come, too. It was all he could do to keep Min safe; if the trap he planned backfired on any of them… He drew on _saidin_ to spin the Mask of Mirrors again, the better to get them apart before either woman decided to try pulling out the other’s secrets.

Elayne broke off from peering suspiciously at Nynaeve to quirk an eyebrow as she took in his altered appearance, while Aviendha blinked at the sight. _Saidin_ flipped his stomach over and he closed his eyes as he fought for control.

“You are still beautiful, Rand,” came the Daughter-Heir’s voice gently.

He opened his eyes as Min laughed at Elayne’s words. “That face would make a goat faint!” She had made no secret of how ridiculous she thought his disguise. Elayne’s lips twitched as if she agreed, despite what she had just said. Aviendha laughed with Min.

“You have a sense of humor, Min Farshaw! That face would make a _herd_ of goats faint.” Min chortled and Elayne made a sound that might have been a hastily swallowed laugh herself. 

“I am who I am,” Rand retorted as he heaved himself to his feet. “You just won’t see it.”

\---

As the door closed behind a disguised Rand and the three other women, Nynaeve stared at Lan in amazement. “You heard that, too, didn’t you?” she asked. She sounded like a ninny, but she felt like her head was still spinning after what had just transpired in their rooms. Before today, she would not have believed any one of the four could be involved in something so…so…. There were no words! Indecent didn’t come close. Some part of her wanted to say disgusting, but she could not bring herself to use it for her friends.

Lan had apparently recovered his equanimity. “I don’t understand it either, Nynaeve, but it’s none of our concern, if they are all willing to go along with…with whatever they are doing.”

She turned a frown toward the door they had left through. “What _are_ they doing? Elayne is up to something, but all that nonsense distracted me.”

Lan’s tone was _very_ dry. “When a man and woman profess their love, talk of marriage and then go to her rooms to discuss something, that’s usually an easy answer.” A moment later he went on more ruefully, “Though I suppose when it’s three women, Light knows what they have in mind.”

Nynaeve stared at her husband again. “They _wouldn’t_! Not…not all four…no! I will not hear that! I have half a mind to go after them and put a stop to … to whatever it is! It’s nothing good, mind you! Anything Elayne still wants to hide after what she just said in front of us, in our own rooms, must be appalling!”

“As you say, Nynaeve,” Lan pointed out, “they were determined to go through with what we just heard, no matter that we were in the room and no matter how Rand tried to put them off. Do you think you’ll be able to stop them now?” 

He was being entirely too reasonable. Nynaeve sniffed and released her grip on her braid. “What _were_ they thinking? At least Rand seemed to know he was in the wrong! How could they just accept him saying that? And to encourage him, too! And all that about marrying more than one of them!”

“The Aiel do that,” Lan noted. “Rhuarc and Bael each have two wives. Though I’ve never heard of even an Aielman with three,” he allowed.

“Do you think it was Aviendha put all this in their heads?” Nynaeve asked thoughtfully. Her husband shrugged. She remembered from Salidar, Elayne and Min had been trying to come to terms with both being in love with Rand. Then Aviendha came with Mat and she and Elayne were thick as thieves, with Elayne seemingly trying to turn herself into an Aiel, all the way up to this first-sister business… Had they settled on that filthy Aiel nonsense as a compromise? However close Elayne was with both women, they plainly were not thrilled about each other…

“Enough of them,” she declared. “If they want to make fools of themselves over a man, it’s none of our concern. If Rand tries to take advantage of it, he deserves whatever they do to him.” 

Nynaeve rose from her chair, and Lan shifted his sword as he rose with her, looking ready for these renegades Rand wanted to kill to jump out from under the bed at any moment. That reminded her of the _ter’angreal_ Rand wanted her to keep safe… Well, she was not about to lug them through the palace. She embraced _saidar_ , still delighting in being able to do that at will, and set a warding over the scrip on her table, and then a weave of Fire and Air to hide it from prying eyes. Finally, she inverted both weaves to hide them from any female channelers who might come in. 

“That should keep them until we get back. I want to get some of the things from Ebou Dar. This sounds exactly like the sort of business Moghedian might be interrupting, and this time I mean to be ready for her.” After a moment’s thought, she added, “I don’t know if Elayne or Aviendha will come, but it might be well to also have some help with us who hasn’t lost her mind.”

“Whom did you want to bring?” Lan asked. “I don’t think Rand is going to trust the older sisters, and for that matter, I doubt they’d even be willing to come.”

“The sisters can’t fight, until they feel threatened, and the Kin probably would not be much use anyway,” Nynaeve told her husband. She realized she was tugging on her braid. There really was no other choice. “While I’m fetching the _ter’angreal_ , would you please find Alivia and bring her back here, discreetly?” The Seanchan woman had boasted earlier about her skill as a weapon. Perhaps she could prove her trustworthiness now.


	3. Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing new here, just the bonding scene from Rand's PoV

Rand’s disguised walk through the palace following Elayne, Min and Aviendha was uneventful, though they were trailed by two women in elaborate, showy versions of the uniform of the Queen’s Guards, with plumed hats, and lace spilling from beneath silk coats and trimming sashes across their chests. He assumed they were guards. They had been waiting outside the rooms, carrying weapons like they could use them, despite their decorative garb, but a woman less likely to employ bodyguards than Elayne, he could not imagine. She was all but grinning at their revulsion toward his disguise. 

When they arrived, she closed the door on the armed women as he leaned against a table in the sitting room, pushing through the nausea of dropping the illusion. “I need a drink,” he announced, catching sight of a silver pitcher across the room, trying not to let them see how unsteadily he staggered to the side table to pour himself a cup. He drank most of it without tasting, wondering how much longer he could hide his strange illness. 

“Are you well, Rand?” came Elayne’s worry-tinged voice behind him. Perhaps not long at all. “Nynaeve can…”’ 

“I’m as fine as I can be,” he cut her off. He finished the cup. The spiced wine was no longer warm, but it was better than letting them glimpse any more of his weakness than he had to. “Now, what is it you don’t want Nynaeve to hear?”

There was dead silence behind him as he started to pour another cup. Plainly he was not supposed to have noticed. They really seemed to think he was the blind one at times, all three of them.

When Elayne spoke, her voice was just slightly too nonchalant. “We want to bond you our Warder. All three of us. It is customary to ask, first.” 

He whipped around to stare at her. She had taken a seat and was gazing at him with perfect royal - or perhaps Aes Sedai - composure. Min perched beside Elayne on the table, while Aviendha was cross-legged on the floor on her other side, with no more expression than if Elayne had asked him to pour her a cup of the wine. He realized he was still tilting the pitcher onto the floor. He jerked it upright and replaced it on the side table, stepping out of the puddle and trying to wipe the spilled wine from his cup off his coat. There was a glint in Elayne’s eye as she noted his reaction. Maybe she only said it to startle him, and didn’t truly mean it, but he doubted it, the way this day was going. 

“You really are mad! You know what’s ahead of me. You know what it means for anyone I’m bonded to!” Alanna’s bond lay in the back of his mind. Too far from Cairhien to know what she was thinking. Light, to have Elayne or Aviendha in his head instead of her. “Even if I don’t go insane, she has to live through me dying!” Or Min. 

_Wait, how…?_ “And what do you mean, all three of you? Min can’t channel.” Part of him didn’t want an answer, part of him hoped to hear it was possible, so he changed the subject. 

“Anyway, Alanna Mosvani got there ahead of you, and she didn’t bother asking. She and Verin were taking some Two Rivers girls to the White Tower. I’ve been bonded to her for months, now,” he finished, hiding the bitterness. Bad enough he had let her take advantage, if it cost him Elayne and…no. Better to protect them, better his death fall on Alanna than Aviendha or Elayne…

Of course _they_ didn’t see it that way at all. Where hearing him confess his feelings for two other women didn’t give any of them so much as a blink, this touched off the explosion. 

“And you kept it from me, you wool-headed sheepherder? If I’d known...” Min flashed one of her knives briefly before slumping in frustration as she glared at the blade she couldn’t use on Alanna without affecting him, too. 

Aviendha stroked the hilt of her own knife, stating more than asking, “This was against custom.”

“Very much so,” pronounced Elayne, in a cold fury. “Alanna has more _toh_ to him than she could repay in a _lifetime_! And to us. Even if she doesn’t, she will wish I had just _killed_ her after I lay hands on her!” 

“After _we_ lay hands on her,” Aviendha nodded with lethal determination. 

In spite of himself, Rand felt oddly gratified. It was for the best, no matter what he wanted and even if they couldn’t see it, but their indignation was satisfying. No one else would have been so outraged on his behalf. He was the Dragon Reborn, a figure of terrifying power. That anyone _could_ hurt him seemed beyond the comprehension of most. That these three, of all people, should be so upset for him, when they deserved his strength, should not make him feel good. But it was satisfying, nonetheless. 

“So, you can see there’s no point to this.” Rand looked into his cup to avoid seeing their disappointment. Probably best to be gone before it sunk in. “I…I think I had better go back to Nynaeve, now. Are you coming. Min?” It _would_ be better for her if she stayed behind. Anyway, he had no reason to hope she’d come.   
  
“There is a point,” said Elayne, leaning forward intently. Her blue eyes seemed like to swallow him as her words poured out. “One bond doesn’t ward you against another. Sisters don’t bond the same man because of custom, Rand, because they don’t want to share him, not because it can’t be done. And it isn’t against Tower law, either.” That last came out hurriedly, as if it wasn’t quite something the Tower would approve of, either. “Well, we _do_ want to share you! We _will_ share you, if you agree.” 

She sat up straighter, her voice becoming softer to match her words. “I am asking, Rand. We are asking. Please, let us bond you.”

It was too much. To have her pleading, in her own palace. To have Aviendha at her side, looking just as anxious. To imagine them in his head, to share their feelings, to have the knowledge of them he wished he never had of Alanna…

“Min, you knew, didn’t you?” he demanded staring at her. “You knew if I laid eyes on them…” He had told her what it meant for him to love anyone, before he knew how he felt about her. She knew he needed to keep them safe, from him most of all, and she led him right into their hands. And she knew, she had to know, he wouldn’t be able to refuse them.

“I didn’t know about the bonding until they told me less than an hour ago. But I knew, I hoped, what would happen if you saw them again. Some things have to be, Rand. They have to be,” she replied, her eyes on his. 

Rand looked down into the wine cup again, as much to avoid the softness of her expression, the plea in Elayne’s or the wary hope in Aviendha’s. They all three deserved so much more, and instead, they asked for him. A man who might turn on them, whatever he wished. Who had to put the world and his fight against the Shadow ahead of them. And this was all they wanted. How could he refuse? He was at the end of his will. He had tried to be strong, to protect them from himself, but he couldn’t put them off any more. 

“All right,” he gave in. “I can’t say I do not want this, because I do. The Light burn me for it! But think of the cost. Think of the price you’ll pay.” They could save themselves and him, if they could just do that, but they would not. 

None of them responded to him; instead Elayne and Aviendha exchanged a warm smile as his skin tingled with feel of _saidar_. The Daughter-heir and the Aiel woman seemed to gaze back and forth between each other and Min. He guessed they were weaving something about all three women. Finally, they both turned their attention to Rand, after Min licked her lips through a grin at whatever they did to her. Elayne breathed deeply, studying him, and Rand tensed, recalling the sensation of the last time he was bonded. It had been like a blast of overwhelming heat that lasted an instant, but seared him to the bone.

This was different. The heat was there, it was every bit as powerful and intense, but somehow…not. Like the difference between being embraced and being strangled. Instead of a raging inferno, it was as if he suddenly entered a room with a blazing fire, coming out of a cold he had not noticed before that moment. The warmth settled all the way into him and seemed to ignite a second bond inside his head. He touched his temples with his fingertips, barely noticing the feel of _saidar_ vanishing, as sensations flowed along the new bond. It was a single bond, but he could feel all three women as strongly and clearly as he ever felt Alanna in the same room. All thoughts of the Green sister faded as the new bond absorbed his attention. Elayne, Min, Aviendha…all in his head. Their thoughts, their feelings…they… Light! It was so different from…from anything he had experienced. 

“Oh Light, Rand, the pain. I never knew; I never imagined.” Min’s voice sounded hurt, but he could feel that she hurt for him, that her pain came from knowing his. “How can you stand it?” Compassion flowed from her as she went on enumerating the aches that had been with him so long that he noticed them no more than any other part of himself. “Why aren’t you crying, Rand? Why aren’t you crying?”

As if in answer, Aviendha, her eyes gleaming, laughed out loud. “He is the _Car’a’carn_ , as strong as the Three-fold Land itself!” There was compassion in there, but it was almost drowned by pride. Pride! Aviendha was proud of him? Without the bond, he might not have believed those words coming from the woman who had derided him as a soft wetlander on their first days out of Rhuidean. 

Elayne said nothing, merely stared at him with her own emotions blazing alongside the other two. Satisfaction - at her weaving, he guessed - and compassion for his injuries, alongside some of the pride Aviendha felt at his bearing them, but in her, most of all, was a pure joy. 

“The veins of gold.” Tears spilled from Aviendha’s eyes. “Oh, the veins of gold. You do love me, Rand.” He didn’t know what she meant by veins of gold, and he expected they might all have cause to weep from him, but her tears were joyous, the same joy as Elayne felt, that was overtaking Min’s pity and concern, and mixed in with the same emotion in all three. Love. They loved him and their joy was in feeling his own love for them. The love drove all the other emotions, the compassion for his pains, the pride in whatever they found to admire and the joy Aviendha felt discovering in discovering his love, that Min had in seeing it in a new way and which Elayne took in her new-found certainty of it. 

“The Light send you know what you’ve done,” he said, his throat tight from the emotions he struggled to contain. There was no hiding how he felt from them, not any longer, but he thought he might weep as well if he let himself think on what they were sure to feel in the end. “The Light send you aren’t…” No matter what he did now, they _would_ suffer. And they knew how he felt, he could tell through the bond, but there was no fear, no regret, only more love, more compassion. 

“I…I have to go, now.” While he could still leave them at all. If he gave in to the bond, he might find himself simply contemplating in wonder until Tarmon Gaidon came. “At least I’ll know you are all well now; I won’t have to worry about you.” There was that. Whatever secrets Nynaeve or Elayne were keeping in the Palace, he would know she and Aviendha and Min were safe when he left. 

“Nynaeve will be frantic thinking I’ve slipped away without seeing her,” he added with a grin. “Not that she doesn’t deserve a little flustering.” Nynaeve’s displeasure was not something he’d have courted before this morning, but next to what was in his head, he could not bring himself to care what she thought. He nearly turned to the door when a change in Elayne’s emotions brought him up short.

“There is one more thing, Rand,” the Daughter-Heir said from her seat at the table, before stopping to swallow. Aviendha’s and Min’s feelings changed just as abruptly when she spoke. He glanced warily from one to the other. They were holding tightly to their thoughts, anxious, but not upset. Elayne, on the other hand, was…nervous, perhaps with a touch of trepidation. After everything else that had passed between them, what could make her feel that way, now? 

“I suppose Aviendha and I have to talk while we can,” Min burst out as she pushed off the table. “Somewhere we can be alone. If you’ll excuse us?” 

“Yes. Min Farshaw and I must learn about one another,” Aviendha agreed hastily, having risen from the floor. They were alike in their wariness and hesitation toward one another, for all they left the room arm-in-arm. Though he still felt their love, whatever they were about had less to do with him, and more entailed a very strong affection for Elayne. The door closed behind them and Elayne turned back to meet his eyes, considering him, still nervous in his head.

“There is something they’ve had from you that I haven’t…” Elayne broke off, flushing prettily. Her discomfiture swelled even greater, awkwardness coming into the mix, as if she didn’t know how to ask or feared his rejection. Rand would not have believed he would ever see her this out of sorts. S _he tells me she loves me and wants to marry me in front of her closest friends, she asks to let them bond me, what has her so…?_

She appeared to be concentrating on something he couldn’t sense. Then her attention returned to him, nervousness and awkwardness so strong in the bond he wondered that she could speak. What had he given both Aviendha and Min? What had he given either that Elayne wanted but was afraid to ask for? She took a deep breath. “You will have to help me with my buttons,” she finally said. “I cannot take this dress off by myself.”

 _Why would she need to take…? Oh._ He reached for Elayne as she rose from her chair.


	4. A Good Joke

Birgitte’s study was warm despite the cold outside the Palace, too warm, even. There were no windows – the work she did here was not for prying eyes, nor was her paperwork enjoyable enough to want to do it again if wind or rain got into the room – and it could quickly become stifling with a fire laid on the small hearth. Elayne and the other sisters had a trick of blocking the cold away from their skin, but it didn’t pass through the warder bond, not even theirs. But as oppressive as the room got with a fire, leaving it cold on a day like this was even more of a distraction. The ink and sealing wax worked better in the warmth, too, so Birgitte endured it.

Signing the pay orders for the Guard for the month, she set them aside, grateful for Master Norry’s report on the funds that had suddenly become available. Next were the payment reports for the mercenary companies. Usually, on the rare occasions a Queen of Andor needed mercenary companies to augment the Queen’s Guard and the nobles’ levies, the rates were set by what the crown was willing to pay. A company wanting royal patronage – and most did – took the fees they were offered. But when three or more Houses were claiming the Lion Throne, companies that wanted to, could play potential employers off one another for more gold. Birgitte was forced to negotiate with each company, and given Elayne’s orders, and the need that drove them, she couldn’t do much else than meet their asking price. Which meant a different agreement with each company, which meant checking each contract against the assignments carried out and making sure the pay claimed was earned.

Absently, she wondered if Elayne’s new bodyguard would need a different accounting. They were still drawing the same pay, with the new uniforms and honor of the post enough to get her volunteers for now, but eventually, once the bodyguard was well established, they’d be targets for bribery, and when the novelty of their duties wore off, the benefits of the post would seem thinner too. But if the increase in coin were too much, it would draw more recruits from greed than dedication. She decided to hold off any changes for now. If the bodyguards were to be paid differently, the sensible thing to do would be to put the accounts in the charge of their commander, Captain Mellar. The man had the job for the very reason that Birgitte and Elayne did not trust him a hair. Giving him control over those kinds of funds would be right out.

Thinking of Elayne, she noticed a change in the bond. Elayne was surprised and pleased. She had been meeting with Norry … could the man have brought good news two days in a row? No, this was more affectionate. A friend? Had one of her estate stewards or her mother’s close supporters come with more men?

Birgitte bent to the accounts again. If there were more men to patrol the city and man the walls, she’d learn soon enough. Initialing another mercenary pay order, she placed it on the finished stack and picked up the next. Gomaisen’s company was supposed to be guarding the granaries in the eastern quarter of New Caemlyn, and there were appended reports from the clerks in charge of making sure the grain stayed under Gomaisen’s guard, instead of vanishing into the warehouses of millers who were willing to bribe the mercenaries.

Selecting the account tallies for the next company, she paused. Elayne was moving. She felt some urgency, and some anxiety, but still nothing that seemed serious or alarming. Nothing at all like the realization that she had drunk forkroot the day before. Aviendha was with her, and Elayne could keep a cool head in danger. Still, perhaps she should… _You should bloody well get back to the flaming reports_ , she told herself. Deni and Caseille were on Elayne’s door with orders to accompany her if she left, and to send word for reinforcements if she tried to leave the Palace. Not that Birgitte really thought Elayne would try to shake her bodyguard so soon after agreeing to it, but it was best not to take chances with her.

As she picked her way through the mercenaries’ pay reports, Birgitte absently noticed a surge of joy through the bond. It seemed the news had been good. Had one of her brothers returned to the Palace? Birgitte looked forward to the day she could put all of this on Gawyn, but even the other would not be unwelcome. Galad was far too pretty to be trusted, and Elayne was considerably less than fond of him, but from what Birgitte had seen of him in Samara he was loyal to her, and his abilities were nothing to be dismissed. Elayne might not be happy about relying on him, but she wasn’t a fool, either. She knew enough to take what help she could. Which led Birgitte’s thoughts back to the mercenaries. The bloody woman was likely right that she needed them, too! Not that Birgitte’s own points were wrong either, they couldn’t be trusted and would have to be watched, especially if fighting broke out in earnest…

Elayne was moving again. Excited, happy, amused, and still a little anxious. And the stack of reports had hardly diminished at all. Another company’s bill due. Elayne seemed to have returned to her rooms, and Birgitte had just finished the last of the mercenary pay and duty rosters when she dropped them and bolted for the door. Elayne had … disappeared. There was no other word for it. One minute she was in Birgitte’s head, feeling anxious and had it been excited, somehow? The feelings Birgitte could recall had definitely been odd, not something she had felt through the bond before, but she hadn’t noticed anything worrying either. Was this some new Aes Sedai trick she had mastered? Was this why she had finally agreed to having bodyguards? Because she had puzzled out some way to elude Birgitte in spite of the bond? 

Birgitte stalked out of her study. Elayne had been in her rooms, or near enough, in the minutes before she had vanished. At least she could begin looking there. She began trotting as soon as she was out of sight of the officers and guards in this part of the palace, given over to functionaries, especially the clerks who served the Queen’s Guard. It wouldn’t do to panic the men, but every moment she let Elayne get a head start…

As she arrived in the residential halls, the bond came back to life in Birgitte’s head, causing her to nearly collapse with relief. Elayne was… her first thought was “well,” but the next was to reconsider. In the months they had been bonded she had _never_ felt anything like this! Elayne’s emotions were blazing with joy and excitement and physically she felt … Light! Someone was touching her and … _Oh light!_ Birgitte would never have thought she’d feel this through the bond. Yes, Elayne was a grown woman, and a beautiful one, but most times she scarcely seemed aware of men, and anyway, she was so innocent, Birgitte had wondered if she knew anything at all of what to do with one. 

Still walking toward Elayne’s rooms, Birgitte became uncomfortably aware of just how much Elayne did know - or was learning! The bloody mirroring was happening. Birgitte was feeling as heated as if she herself was abed with a well set-up man. Gaidal came to her mind and she flushed thinking of her Aes Sedai, her friend, practically a little sister, in the same light as sharing a bed with the man she had loved in more lifetimes than she could count or remember. It just seemed wrong to think of Elayne at all like that! She blushed at off-color jokes! If a man even looked at her like a woman, she went as prim as a Tovan spinster in her mind! And yet, Birgitte could feel as surely as in her own flesh, that the Daughter-Bloody-Heir of Flaming Andor was _enthusiastically_ letting some man …. She staggered and caught herself from falling by grabbing a sideboard in the corridor. Whoever he was, whatever he was doing to Elayne, might as well be to Birgitte too! She _had_ to put a stop to this!

But walking was harder, the more absorbed in her sport Elayne became. Birgitte almost couldn’t make her legs move properly for feeling like another body was in their way. Almost panting with the effort, she rounded a corner. She was nearly to Elayne’s rooms, and the sensations were stronger than ever. A part of her was none too thrilled at the idea of bursting in on Elayne in her bedchamber, in the middle of … but something bloody _had_ to be done. This was flaming well intolerable!

“No, not yet,” came a familiar voice ahead of her in the corridor. Concentrating on the sight before her, Birgitte finally recognized Aviendha, staring at her in consternation. She became aware of others around them, but they were all servants and scattering in haste. Just as well. She could deal with Aviendha without having to be discreet.

“You bloody helped her in this, didn’t you!” she demanded of the Aiel girl, whose slight indrawing of her posture, and shrinking demeanor was all the confirmation Birgitte needed. “First, she vanished out of my flaming head and then…!” She trailed off as mentioning what she was feeling through the bond seemed to make it even stronger. Or maybe Elayne was becoming even more… She fought that thought down, tried without success to push Elayne’s feelings back through the bond where they belonged.

“Burn her, I can’t concentrate enough to shake it off! You let me tell you, if she’s doing what I think she’s doing, I’ll kick her tickle-heart around the bloody Palace and then I’ll flaming welt her until she can’t sit for a _month_ – and you alongside her – if I have to find _forkroot_ to do it!” she told the girl who was avoiding her eyes.

Aviendha’s reply was almost petulant. “My first-sister is a grown woman, Birgitte Trahelion! You must stop trying to treat us as children!” Just like a child, she protested Birgitte’s judgment, rather than own what she’d done. No doubt Elayne would be worse when Birgitte put a stop to it. 

Thinking of the Daughter-heir’s likely reaction, she retorted “When she bloody well behaves like an adult, I bloody well treat her as one, but she has no right to do _this,_ not in my flaming head she doesn’t! Not in my…”

Birgitte’s thoughts suddenly scattered as a surge through the bond overwhelmed everything else in her flaming head. Through her head, her body and right down to her toes. Nothing she had felt since well before being ripped out into this strange new living time. She lost all sense of where she was or what she was doing. She was tumbling on a wave off the shore, falling off a cliff, she was blinded by a light and lost in the dark. Gasping, she came back to herself, and realized what she had felt, no, what _Elayne_ had felt! She flaming well _would_ welt the little chit until she couldn’t sit for a…no! Two months!

Awareness of her own surroundings returned as Elayne’s feelings receded from Birgitte’s head, finally. She became aware that she was slumped, not even really standing on her own but being held up by someone on each of her arms. Regaining her balance, she pulled her arms free, one from Aviendha, and one from another woman, tall with curly dark hair, whom she now realized had been standing beside Aviendha the whole time.

Ignoring the other woman, who seemed somehow familiar, she turned her attention to Aviendha. Now that she could think again, she was _going_ to bloody well set Elayne straight on this. “Shield her for me,” she told the Aiel girl, “and I’ll let you off your share.” Aviendha would do it, she was sure. Or at the least, the threat would keep her from helping Elayne. If she surprised the other girl, and kept up the attack, she might make her point before Elayne turned to the Power to stop her.

“You’re Birgitte Silverbow!” came an exclamation. Brigitte’s attention was jerked back to the other woman who had held her up. Big dark eyes were wide with astonishment as she went on, “I saw you at Falme!” And she knew who Birgitte was! Light, who had heard her?

Birgitte checked the hallway but the servants had all found somewhere else to be. Examining this other woman, she tried to puzzle out why she looked familiar and more importantly, what she was doing with Elayne and Aviendha. She was involved in all of this somehow, Birgitte was certain. But first, to set her straight on one matter, at least… “Whatever you saw, Silverbow is dead.” The dark-haired woman gave her a skeptical glance, and Birgitte went on.

“I’m Birgitte Trahelion, now,” she stated, suppressing a wince as the ‘now’ slipped out of her mouth. Burn her, she had all but admitted it. “ _Lady_ Birgitte Trahelion, if you flaming please. Kiss a sheep on Mother’s Day if I can do anything about that, I suppose.” Taking in the dark-haired woman’s garb – very much like what men wore in this day and age, snug breeches, a long coat and boots, but all cut to flatter a woman’s figure. The coat was shorter than a man’s, displaying her hips, with flowers embroidered on the lapels and sleeves of the coat, the latter of which hung slightly from her forearms in a way that Birgitte suspected meant knives sheathed inside. “And who might you be when you’re to home?” As the words came out, she suddenly recognized the girl. 

She had been in Salidar, and Elayne’s most frequent companion aside from Nynaeve and Birgitte herself. Her clothes had not been so well tailored then, nor of such fine fabrics, and she looked taller now, in boots that were similar to Birgitte’s with a raised heel that put her about level with Aviendha. Birgitte had nothing against heels or breeches, but her own were modestly loose. With the heels of her boots and the high hem of her coat, this girl’s lower limbs could only be more exposed if she were naked. “Do you always show off your legs like a bloody feather dancer?” 

“I am Min Farshaw,” she snapped. Perhaps she didn’t recognize Birgitte either? “Elayne, Aviendha and I just bonded a Warder, and if Elayne is celebrating a little, well, you better think twice about storming in, or _you’ll_ be the one sitting tender!” Suddenly she blushed, making her look near as bashful as Aviendha. Almost as if she could feel Elayne, too…

Just like that it came together for Birgitte. Bonded a Warder. Elayne was bedding whatever man they all three bonded, and Aviendha and this Min Farshaw were no doubt as much aware of what the two of them were doing as she. And now that she remembered Min, she remembered how Elayne’s bond felt when she and Min closeted themselves in Salidar with their heads together where no one could hear them, and how similar it felt when she and Aviendha took to one or the other of their bed chambers at night back in Ebou Dar. They weren’t nearly so good at keeping it a secret, not from anyone who knew Elayne well, and Nynaeve had muttered something about ‘Rand’ once while watching Min and Elayne duck off together into the woods. The Dragon Reborn. Who came from the same village as Nynaeve and the Amyrlin and Mat Cauthon, whom Elayne spoke of as familiarly as they. Whose displeasure Elayne seemed indifferent to, maybe even trying to provoke, when she ordered the Dragon banners torn down across the city the very day they arrived in the Palace.

Birgitte had not met him since her strange new birth … the life where she had known Lews Therin Telamon was long gone from her memory…and she hated to recall the times between her lives, especially riding with Gaidal and the others, but she remembered Falme. She remembered a boyish young man, over-tall and good-looking, pleading for help rescuing a girl. They could all see the strands of the Pattern linked to his, and would have known the girls he wanted to save had they come across them in their battle. And now she had a feeling, she would have seen as much had she returned Min’s notice that day or encountered Elayne.

“Him? Mother’s milk in a cup,” Birgitte found herself saying aloud, as she contemplated the newest mess her charge had tangled herself in. “She could have fallen in love with a cutpurse or a horsethief, but she had to choose him, more fool her!”

More fool all three of them. Marked out by the Pattern, to share the destiny of the Dragon, and now they bound themselves twice as much to the man. A fragment of a feeling, of a memory of knowledge she once had between lives, how the Dragon was always a sacrifice, and while he always needed others, those bound to him would pay a price, in grief at that sacrifice, if nothing else. Birgitte found herself wishing again for Gaidal. A simple partnership, of hearts and fates joined. Not this sort of mess Elayne was diving into with as little heed as she ever paid any physical danger. And Light knew, there was that sort of danger, too. Three thousand years had not sufficed to dim the knowledge of the fate of Ilyena Sunhair…

But Birgitte couldn’t explain any of that to the two sullen-looking girls in front of her, so she contented herself with “By what I saw of him at that place you mentioned, the man’s too pretty to be good for any woman.” Neither looked to be taking the hint, so she gave that up for the bad job criticizing a young woman’s taste in men always was and returned to the business at hand. “In any case, she has to stop.”

“You have no right!” Aviendha insisted truculently. Birgitte stifled a sigh. She admired the Aiel girl’s loyalty to Elayne, and it was certainly useful when she proved marginally better able to see sense than the bloody flaming Daughter-heir sheep-kissing Aes Sedai, who believed danger only happened to lesser beings, but as her _sister_ did with courage, Aviendha usually took that loyalty much too far.

“She might be as proper as a Talmouri maiden except when it comes to putting her head on the chopping black, but I think she’ll wind up her courage to put him through his paces again, and even if she does whatever it was she did, she’ll forget and be back in my head. I won’t bloody go through that again!” She focused herself, ready to push past Elayne’s friends, and hoping Aviendha stayed too intimidated to channel.

“Think of it as a good joke,” Aviendha begged. “She has played a good joke on you, that is all.” As if she was just going to stand here and let Elayne play a second one?

“There’s a trick Elayne told me,” Min Farshaw said, hastily snatching at Birgitte’s sleeve. She went on to describe the mental exercise, though claiming it didn’t work for her. 

Birgitte tried imagining Elayne’s feelings wrapped into a kerchief, all the while wondering if Min even had it right, since it didn’t work for her, and seemed to have been none too secure if Elayne had tried it herself. When it didn’t work, she momentarily imagined smothering that bundle of sensations under a pillow and entertained herself with the idea of _that_ making its way across the bond. But she pulled her arm free.

“She’s still there. Step out of my way, Min Farshaw,” If only there _was_ some way she could use this to get back at the wretched woman… But for now, she’d just have to put a stop to it. She felt a moment’s pity for Elayne. However bad a bargain this man was, it was clearly what she wanted, and it seemed she couldn’t even enjoy him in peace. But if the only alternative was sharing _that_ , no amount of pity was going to make Birgitte endure another round.

“ _Oosquai!_ ” cried Aviendha, wringing her hands pathetically. “I know where there is _oosquai!_ If you are drunk…! Please, Birgitte! I…I will pledge myself to obey you, as apprentice to mistress, but please do not interrupt her! Do not shame her so!”

 _Burn my soft heart. And head._ Aviendha’s pleading was too much. It clearly meant a great deal to Elayne and thus to the Aiel woman as well, if she was that desperate. Likely her thoughts were following a similar trail to Birgitte’s. It was the mention of shame that did it. Elayne _had_ tried to protect Birgitte from this, and she’d be mortified to learn she’d failed, that every touch of her lover had passed through the bond to Birgitte as well.

Rubbing her jaw as if considering Aviendha’s plea, Birgitte wondered aloud. “ _Oosquai_? Is that anything like brandy? Hmm.” An idea was taking shape in her head, had begun when Aviendha first mentioned drunkenness, and Birgitte actually liked it now. She thought of the probable effect of her intoxication going through the bond, with Elayne too distracted to fight it off… Thinking of the bond brought Elayne’s state to her awareness. Similar to what she had been feeling before disappearing from Birgitte’s head, but without the trepidation. “I think the girl is blushing!” Birgitte spoke aloud as she felt her own skin tingling. This would do.

“She really is prim most of the time, you know,” she confided to Elayne’s friends. “A joke, you said?” The grin that was building burst out and she waved her arms with it. “Lead me to this _oosquai_ of yours, Aviendha. I don’t know about you two, but I intend to get drunk enough to …well… to take off my clothes and dance on the table. And not a hair drunker!”

Aviendha began laughing as she made the connection, but Min Farshaw still looked confused. “Could we go find that _oosquai_ now? I want to get drunk as a drowned mouse, and fast!”


	5. Melting

Rand rolled over, coming to rest on the pillows beside Elayne. The Daughter-heir was staring at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as she gasped for air in time with him. Heaving a deep breath, she turned part way toward him, before pressing against his side and laying her head on his chest. He curled his arm around her and pulled her even closer, reaching up to stroke her shoulder. Through the bond, he could feel her happiness, contentment and love as well as some decidedly _odd_ physical sensations, but she seemed to have enjoyed what they had just done as much as he.

He met Elayne’s blue-eyed gaze as she looked up at him from his chest. “That was remarkable, Rand,” she breathed. “It felt like a storm in your head. It was exhilarating to feel while we…” she cut herself off with a blush, and he laughed slightly.

“Your own head was amazing,” Rand said, running a finger along her flushed cheek. “I had no idea it would be like this with the bond.”

Elayne twisted her head to kiss the finger. “It was all I dreamed of, and more, Rand.” She turned back to meet his eyes again, and said, “I do love you so much.” Emotion surged in the bond to match her words.

He pulled her up closer and kissed her, parting their lips just slightly to whisper “I love you.” Her arms twined about his neck and she kissed him back and they simply lay together for a moment or maybe an eternity, just feeling close, in their skins and in their heads.

Soon enough, Rand found himself kissing her once more and his hands moving over her body.

“Rand,” Elayne gasped. “You…you’re…? Do you want…again?”

“Are you telling me you don’t?” Rand asked teasingly. For all her words seemed astonished, the bond betrayed her eagerness and arousal. “We could get dressed and…”

“No!” Elayne blurted grabbing his shoulders with both hands, before flushing a bright crimson. He laughed, and shifted his weight, reaching for her once more. Embarrassment disappeared from the bond in a flood of desire that matched his own.

\----

Aviendha refilled the glasses of _oosquai_. She had not been drinking as much as Birgitte Trahelion or Min Farshaw, but her hand was still unsteady. Between the three of them, they had emptied most of two skins. She had no need of the strong drink herself – her bond with Rand al’Thor still lay safely behind the imagined kerchief in her head, but there was nothing else to do while watching the two wetlander women deliberately drown their perceptions. And because of her companions, she could not put the thought of Elayne and Rand out of her mind as readily as she could mask her new warder bond. Not that she was upset or jealous, what she had felt through the bond before she had need to mask it relieved her of any such reason, but it had been long since she had been even in Rand’s company, let alone his arms. It would be pleasant to be with him again, without the shadow of _toh_ hanging over her. 

Birgitte Trahelion lifted her own glass with too much care, stared at it thoughtfully, then downed it in a single gulp. “She’s still going at it,” the archer announced, her words spoken as carefully as her movements. “I can’t tell what she’s doing…but I don’t see how she’ll be walking…walking anywhere.”

“How, how is this supposed to to be…” Min Farshaw trailed off, it looked like she was trying to see where her glass was. They did seem to be moving. Perhaps all the frozen water outside was making the palace move like ships did on the water? Aviendha wondered if she should ask. “To be a trick on Elayne?” Min blurted suddenly. “How are you tricking her, won’t she pass out if she’s getting drunk with you I’m going to pass out I think. My stomach is sick and I think if she empties on Rand that won’t be nice for them. It was nice for me it should be nice for her.” 

“You have honor, Min Farshaw,” exclaimed Aviendha. “That was good of you to see.” It really did seem an amazing equation of obligations. “But when last Birgitte got drunk, Elayne was not sick. She was not talking badly and she could even channel and do it well. I do not think Birgitte can embrace the Source. Because she is drunk. That is why not. Elayne can ignore her if she wishes, but when she is strong in her feelings, she does not know to not know Birgitte. So she will act as she wants without thought because Rand al’Thor is feeling her strongly. She is feeling strong for in him. His strong…” she paused. It was hard to express concepts of channeling to a woman who could not touch the True Source herself. Min Farshaw lacked the frame of reference. She felt like there was another reason she could not make her understand, but it seemed unimportant.

“She certainly is feeling _him_ strongly!” proclaimed Birgitte, taking Min’s glass. Aviendha gave her a level look that the archer affected not to notice, as usual. It was one thing for Aviendha and Min to speak familiarly about Rand and Elayne, they were his lovers as well, and might one day be sister-wives. Birgitte was not, nor would she be. She did not even appreciate his beauty! How could a man be “too pretty”?

“Not funny,” said Min, glaring at Birgitte, the effect of the glare somewhat ruined by her mouth sagging open a bit. “Elayne deserves this him. She’s the best sister friend. Why’d are you her Warder if you’re just to make her sick?”

“Yes,” said Aviendha. One of them must have pushed the table, because it seemed to hit her. Unless she was wobbling? Perching on these chairs was an absurd way to sit. “She bonded you to save her life for you. If she did not care that we used Rand’s blankets, you should not care that she is him in hers. He is not yours!”

“Not yours,” agreed Min. She was very loyal. Once Aviendha had thought wetlanders could not be loyal. They had some odd ideas of where loyalty should lie, but many of them were loyal. Rand in his own way and Elayne and now Min. That worried her once - how could she enter into a marriage with such mercurial people? - but she was not concerned any longer. They would be loyal to Rand and he to them, and they would be loyal sister wives. What more could you ask for, aside from some proper, steady cushions to sit upon on the floor. As legs were meant to sit. Aviendha thought about getting up and sitting on the floor, but that was too much trouble. It was easier to just sit straight from the chair. Min was very tired, her head was on the table. Aviendha thought it must be uncomfortable to bend so far to lie your head down, but she couldn’t seem to think up the words to suggest Min get more comfortable.

Birgitte was starting to sing a song. Her voice was not very good. Aviendha wondered if the drink was helping Elayne express herself with Rand. She was a good sister, but too afraid to seek what she wanted sometimes.

\----

With a happy sigh, Elayne raised herself on one elbow to prop her chin on her hand and stare thoughtfully at Rand. The shyness that had preceded their lovemaking seemed to have completely disappeared; everything about her manner seemed much more relaxed and casual than Rand could ever remember seeing her, in or out of bed, but now a thought seemed to disturb that ease.

“Rand,” she said, with a slight frown, “Why did you say you would give me the Lion Throne? When you were in Caemlyn before, I mean?”

He blinked, somewhat startled by her question. “Because you’re the Daughter-Heir. Your mother was gone, and you were next in the line of succession.”

“I know that,” she responded with exaggerated patience, “I mean why did you say _you_ would _give_ me the throne.”

Rand shifted on his side uncomfortably. This was not a conversation he had imagined taking place with Elayne, not among all the ways he had dreaded, or dared to dream, their reunion could go. “I don’t think I actually said that, Elayne. The closest I can recall is telling Bashere that as far as I was concerned you were queen. And that was only because he asked if I meant to crown myself in Rahvin’s place.”

“Then why did you put the Lion Throne on a pedestal in the Great Hall, as if it was some trophy of conquest?” she demanded, sliding into a sitting position. “You may have killed Rahvin, but Andor was not his, nor did you gain any rights by taking it from him, no matter which foreign generals might have urged you to steal it!” Anger and indignation surged in the bond.

“Well, I could have left the place to the nobles I found dancing attendance on one of the Forsaken!” he retorted. “Or maybe I could have let his strong-arms take over keeping order in the city. No one in this whole flaming country seems to care who’s running things unless they mean to grab the throne for themselves. Without the Aiel, they’d have been fighting over it already, and without Bashere, I’d have been trying to run everything myself, since the only other noble with a sense of obligation I’ve met south of the Blightborder was more interested in tearing down my banners than anything else!”

“I wouldn’t have _had_ to tear down your banners, if you didn’t have half of Andor convinced I was going to be a puppet ruling on your behalf!” Elayne flared right back, the bond full of outrage.

“What difference does that make?” Rand demanded, sitting up, and uncomfortably adjusting the blankets over his lap. “Between the Aiel and everything else, you could have ruled Andor however you wanted. You know I wouldn’t have interfered. I’d have backed whatever you felt you needed to do, and we could have worked together to bring the other nations into line. Light, I’d have been more likely to ask your advice dealing with other lands, than try to tell you how to rule your own! I hoped you’d understand I don’t want any more power than I need, so long as everyone cooperates. I just want the nations working together for Tarmon Gaidon. I thought, I was sure you’d be the one ruler I could count on.”

Her face softened as he blurted out so much that had been festering since he heard that she had torn down his banners, and affection pulsed in his head again. “I’m sorry for how that looked to you, Rand,” she said, leaning forward to touch his cheek. “But it had to look that way to everyone in Andor, otherwise, they’d see my cooperation as subservience. You and I might have known the truth of my rule, but Andorans are proud. We don’t truckle and scrape to the nobles or the crown as they do in Tear or Cairhien. They wouldn’t sit still for any man who tried to rule Andor, or any woman who let herself be a puppet for him.”

“But you’re the rightful heir,” he protested. “I’m not the one who decided you’re to follow Morgase. All I was doing was trying to follow Andor’s own laws! I only came here because Rahvin was the one calling himself king openly! Where were all your countrymen when he crowned himself? They just twiddled their thumbs when ‘King Gaebril’ broke their precious laws and had Trollocs & Myrdraal guarding the palace, but they’ll revolt because I try to make them follow their own laws and use Aiel? I even convinced the Aiel not to take the fifth, that we were not conquering the city or the palace!”

“Light, Rand, I know that’s all true, and I am more grateful than I can say that you avenged Mother and did so much to protect my people.” Elayne reached out and took his hands in hers, squeezing and caressing them. “But no one else knows or believes it. Half the people I spoke to as I traveled to Caemlyn think you were the one to kill her! Others think you’re her son or from a rival house or that you killed _me_. 

“Rand, in Andor, the Queen does not fight herself. Even when we have had queens who were superior generals to their brothers, they let the First Prince command the armies of Andor, and even when there have been queens with husbands or brothers who would have made better rulers, the queen still reigned. That is how people understand that the law is being followed, and that the law holds for the high as well as the low. They need that reassurance, they need to believe the nation is carrying on as they are accustomed, so they can have confidence that their rulers are committed to laws which protect them.”

Elayne sighed, which was interesting to watch in her unclothed state, though she seemed completely unaware of it. “My love, no one knows better than I that your heart _is_ in the right place, and that you’d be as sympathetic a regent as any farmer or tradesman could wish. But _they_ have no way of knowing that about you. They may not know me, either, but by following the traditions and laws of Andor, I can demonstrate that I respect those laws that protect them from the sort of nobles we saw in Tear. You made some very good and necessary changes in Tear…”

“I had good advice,” Rand interjected, which made her smile, and lift his hand to press a kiss to the heron brand on the palm, as love shone in the bond.

“I gave you advice based on laws we already have in Andor,” Elayne told him. “It’s those laws unique to Andor that make the people so unwilling to have an outsider rule them.” She could not be turned for long from something she felt important, Rand remembered. He also remembered some of the fun he’d had trying to distract her during similar lectures in the Stone of Tear. He moved the hand she was not holding to rest on her thigh a moment before gently sliding it up and down.

Elayne smiled at him, and the bond stirred in a way he thought promising, but she continued speaking. “If I can win the trust of Andor, when I gain the throne in my own name and by my own power, I will be in a _far_ better position to support you, and to join Andor’s strength to you in uniting the nations and fighting the Shadow. I have already publically stated my support for ‘the Dragon Reborn’ independent of my claim.”

“I suppose I can’t ask for anything more,” Rand said absently, his attention more on the hand he was moving farther along her leg.

“Well, you _could_ ask for a great many other things in which I would be _more_ than happy to accommodate you, beyond my duty to Andor,” she breathed, leaning forward slowly, arching forward in a manner that would have flaunted her cleavage in a dress, and without one, near made his throat seize. There was no trace of the consternation or anger she had felt at the outset of this talk.

“Is there perhaps some way I could demonstrate my commitment to _unity_ with the Dragon Reborn?” Elayne’s hand slid beneath the blanket to his leg, and her fingertips glided up his thigh in a mirror of his own hand on her. “Andor owes you a debt of gratitude as well, for liberating Caemlyn from the clutches of the Shadow.” Through the bond, love, desire and playfulness swirled wildly, almost in rhythm with her words and actions, as if she was barely thinking, simply acting on each whim or want to come into her head.

“Truly, it was my honor, my lady,” Rand blurted, trying to banter playfully, as Elayne drew the blanket back and flung it sharply off to the side. She gave him a smile so wicked he barely recognized it on her face. 

“As Daughter-Heir, I feel a personal duty to repay Andor’s debts, my Lord Dragon!” She shifted forward on the bed to kneel astride his lap, sliding her hands up his chest as she leaned in for a kiss, then flung herself down on the bed and pulled him atop her. He wasn’t sure where she had been hiding this wild side of herself, but lectures or no, he didn’t mind it at all.

\---

Rand started awake. The first light of dawn was appearing in the window of Elayne’s bedchamber, and she lay sleeping in his arms. He had lingered for hours longer than he had expected…or feared…when he had arrived in Caemlyn, but he could not regret the delay in the slightest as he stared at Elayne’s face and brushed a curl back from her temple.

It seemed like all three women he loved could each in her own way make his head spin, always having him off-balance without half trying. With Elayne, he always seemed to find himself bouncing between contradictions. There were the two letters she had left him in Tear, and her emotions the day before, swinging from hesitance and trepidation, to uninhibited exuberance. From pleading with him to be her Warder, to insisting that he do nothing to protect her from her rivals for her throne. In public she tore down his banners, and in private thanked him for saving Caemlyn from Rahvin in such a way as to leave no doubt of her sincerity. Furiously outraged over another woman bonding him, she called the ones who shared his bed sisters, and the bond showed her sincere affection for them! He had once said he didn’t know whether to kiss Elayne or kneel at her feet. Yesterday he had come to Caemlyn afraid to face her and now he could barely bring himself to leave. 

Silently, Rand eased out of the bed and gathered his clothes. Dressing in the dark, he stumbled over a pillow on the floor. The small puff of feathers brought back a memory of something he tried to do in the Stone, the day he had first kissed Elayne. 

Without thought he seized the Power, and when his stomach eased enough to concentrate on the flows, he spun Fire, Water and Earth into a handful of the feathers. The first time he had done this, it had been on impulse and the result had been imperfect. The second time he tried it, he had failed utterly. This time he knew what he was doing, knew how to command _saidin_ , even if it nearly knocked him off his feet with dizziness or nausea, and in his hand the feathers had been joined and reshaped into a perfect flower in bloom. A lily of a pure golden color certainly never seen in nature. Bending to kiss Elayne’s still-sleeping brow, he left it on the pillow beside her head. 

He had lingered long enough; his enemies sought him out, and _saidin_ would take his mind and flesh. If he was going to protect the women he loved from his enemies and from himself, he had best be about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about this last one. A sense of completion impelled me to try to show what Birgitte was referencing while talking to Aviendha & Min, and to address Rand's reference later in the novel to a conversation about Andoran politics with Elayne, wherein she managed to persuade him to stay out of things. So the Aviendha part was just an indulgence of my juvenile side and the last Rand-Elayne part was indulgence of my fantasy politics geek-hood. And the dialogue is awkward as all get out without Jordan's to crib from, because in my mind, Rand & Elayne are both awkward as all get out and hopeless when it comes to romantic banter or seduction. I had some hopes of showing Birgitte's 'sabotage Elayne's inhibitions with secondhand intoxication' trick, but anything I tried just made that scene more dirty and awkward. So I chopped it down and mercy-killed it, but I really don't have anything else on which to end this. Sorry. WoT deserves better.


End file.
